Highly Overrated But Still Good

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is a pretty good, entertaining and suspenseful early Hitch, though for some reason it doesn't really stick in the memory. It is mainly feted now for the famous Majestic Hotel ballroom shot, and it is quite clear that after that bit of legerdemain, Hitchcock loses interest and the film is wrapped up unconvincingly in five perfunctory minutes. Lots of other good things though. Nova Pilbeam is charming (Derrick de Marney less so). Edward Rigby is on good scene-stealing form, and Basil Radford's single scene is a masterly tour de force of deadpan comic acting. The two contrasting lunches of the Burgoyne family are also highlights, providing character and comedy while subtly moving the plot along, with Erica's four brothers brilliantly realised. There is lovely photography of the Sussex countryside. The scene where Erica is rescued is genuinely scary, despite being studio-bound. There are some dreadful and wholly unnecessary model shots, but at least they are better than those in The Lady Vanishes. Nevertheless, this feels like a dry run for the latter, rather than its peer.

After recently watching such classic Hitchcock films as "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes", I had high hopes for this effort as well. Unfortunately, the end product (while nicely polished) lack one key ingredient that would have automatically ratcheted it up a notch: tension.For a basic plot summary, "Young and Innocent" sees a young man named Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney) wrongfully accused for the murder of a woman found on a beach. While eluding the police through the England countryside on a mission to exonerate himself, Robert enlists the help of a young woman (Erica Burgoyne) who also believes in his cause.From a cinematic point of view, this 1937 effort is very polished and slick. If you were sitting in a theater at that time watching this movie unfold, you would more than likely have been entertained. However, its key fault is that it lacks any sort of dramatic tension whatsoever.For starters, there is never any doubt about Robert's innocence. Just adding some ambiguity to his character would have added a lot to the overall plot line. Plus, it doesn't help that the "chase" for Robert portrays the typically farcical cop who can't do anything right. Never for a second do you believe that he will be caught.Thus, while "Young and Innocent" isn't outrightly terrible, it is not one of Hitch's better endeavors. Only in the final climactic scene do we get a glimpse of the master director at work. Other than that, boredom seeps in through the cracks.

This early Hitchcock feature resembles his earlier hit "The 39 Steps" it could have been called "The 40 Steps". Again we have an innocent young man charged with murder who goes on the run in tow with a pretty young female who at first dislikes and disbelieves him but who before too long has fallen for him and helped clear his name.The best thing in front of the camera is the 18 year old, strikingly named Nova Pilbeam, (wonderful name for a debutante!) who is pretty, sunny and charming in equal measure. The equally wonderfully named Derrick De Marney, who plays the man on the run, Robert Tusdall, on the other hand, I found to be a bit more gormless with an odd smirk on his face which never quite goes away. Together they mesh reasonably well if you can excuse their frightfully posh clipped English accents of the time. There are some nice Hitchcockian touches that as a fan I enjoyed, like the way he starts the film right in the middle of a bitter argument between the soon-to-be-murdered film actress and her jealous, twitchy, in more ways than one, husband, the way Tisdall distracts the courtroom staff to make his escape, a ruse similarly played out in more than one subsequent Hitch feature, most notably "North By Northwest's" auction scene, the saved-by-her-fingertips rescue of Pilbeam after the car crashes down an old mine shaft, featuring a subjective face-shot we'd see again in "Saboteur" and of course "North By North-west" plus most famously the great tracking shot near the end which literally eyeballs the guilty man.Lots of the rest of it, to be honest is a little stiff and creaky, like the scenes with Pilbeam and her family round the breakfast table and of dull, plodding policemen on their tails. There are some awful model shots too, one in particular of Tisdall running away from the camera had me giggling out loud and the fact that the show-band is playing in black-face certainly jars with modern sensibilities.But otherwise, you can see Hitchcock forming his style here, although it would take an Atlantic crossing a few years later for the Master to deliver a mostly superb run of films throughout the 40's and 50's on which his reputation largely rests.

Maybe not with the same quota of laughs as The Lady Vanishes or the same level of daring-do as 39 Steps, Young and Innocent (called The Girl Was Young somewhere, I guess) was another of Alfred Hitchcock's films about a murder, a chase, and plenty of intrigue and double crossings and such. It's also hard to find a good print, unfortunately, as it's fallen into the public domain and has yet to get the Criterion treatment. Luckily this story of a policeman's wife and a writer on the run - the latter is accused of committing the crime of a murder (a woman who is found on a beach right near the waves, an evocative image as any).Two things really stand out here, years after seeing the film: first are the performances from Nova Pilbeam and Derek DeMarney. They're not any kind of marquee names from the period like Robert Donat or Vivien Leigh, but they get into these characters the best they can and make themselves a charismatic couple with chemistry and good timing. The other thing is a particular reveal during a ballroom dance sequence. It's sometimes very hard to ever get particular shots that Hitchcock pulls off out of your mind, and there's one in this film for sure: as people dance and the band plays on, Hitch and his DP fly over the audience - not so high ala the shot in The Birds or something, but high enough that we can view over the people dancing - and we suddenly see that there is a character in the line of sight: a band member (the drummer, I believe) who is the actual culprit! If one wasn't sure who it exactly was at this place, the clues being what they are, now we know.How Hitchcock uses his camera to create a visual grammar for that moment - in words for the audience to really go "Oh!" in a moment - is a testament to his cunning and clever abilities as a storyteller. That's a moment of pure cinema that stands out in this very good (if not totally great) effort.